


Through the Darkness, Together

by Griddlebone



Category: The Pirates of Dark Water
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Canon Compliant, Friendship/Love, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Recovery, Self-Sacrifice, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21827857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Griddlebone/pseuds/Griddlebone
Summary: Twelve Treasures of Rule restored, brought by a prince to Octopon. He held one more in his hand... and then it all fell apart.When Bloth captures Ren and the final Treasure, Ioz and Tula will do whatever it takes to keep their little band of misfits together, and alive.
Relationships: Ioz & Ren (Pirates of Dark Water), Ren & Tula (Pirates of Dark Water)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Through the Darkness, Together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [huffieimma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/huffieimma/gifts).



> Thank you for the opportunity to return to this series after all this time!

His world had shifted, becoming pain and nothing else. He was aware, dimly, that he lay upon a bone-and-wood surface, and that his hands were bound behind him, the ropes cutting into flesh rubbed raw where the shackles had bit through the skin. He was aware, too, that people were speaking… but those things were all very far away, quiet and muffled with the distance.

He lacked the strength to do more than lie where he had been dropped. Even the pain, spurred ever onward by the line of tiny stinging slugs strung along his collarbone, could no longer rouse him. Determination, hope, vigor: he had nothing left to give.

It wouldn’t be long now before his body failed him, before death swallowed him—it was less a thought, and more a visceral awareness that he had reached his utmost limit. He could not survive much more of this.

His friends, the treasures, Octopon… the entire world of Mer… all of it would soon be lost to the dark water. He had done everything he could, and still failed them.

At least he wouldn’t live to see them all meet their fate.

Tula stood beside Ioz on the deck of the Maelstrom. It was the last place on Mer she ever wanted to find herself… but for Ren she would brave any danger. Even this one.

For Ren, who lay frighteningly still a few feet from her, who had not moved since Bloth’s men carried him out and tossed him there, she _had_ to do this. He might be alive, as Bloth had promised, but it didn’t look good.

While Ioz carried out the negotiation, Tula was supposed to keep an eye on Bloth and his men, but her gaze kept being drawn back to Ren. She’d seen him in dire straits plenty of times before and he had always recovered. But this time…

She jerked her gaze away from Ren to Bloth. The pirate lord had eyes only for Ioz and the treasures he carried, brought by force from Octopon to ransom its wayward prince. Tula might as well not have been there at all, for all the mind he paid her.

They couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome.

“The boy still lives,” Bloth was saying. “If you can call it that. Now, show me the treasures. No treasures, no deal.” He clearly believed he still had the upper hand. He had never been more wrong.

Even as he spoke, Tula dug deep into her reservoirs of power. She let tendrils of that power radiate from her feet—clad in boots newly stuffed with soil taken from around the roots of the Viva Tree on Andorus, soil in which she could plant her own roots—to snare Bloth and his men in an ecomancer’s deadliest and most forbidden trap.

Instead of sailing for Octopon to retrieve the gems, as Bloth had believed, Tula and Ioz had arrived at an altogether different means of freeing Ren and the thirteenth Treasure of Rule.

Agony jolted through Tula’s mind as her power rebelled at being put to this use, but she couldn’t let that or anything else interfere with her concentration. If she lost even the slightest bit of control over her power, she might also lose control over the men she currently held frozen in place. Worse, she might end up accidentally catching or harming Ren and Ioz.

So she put all that she was into keeping control over the power and the spell it wrought. The pain didn’t matter. Nor did the strange sense of distortion that had begun to creep into her mind, blackening her awareness around the edges, like a burning sheet of parchment. She could not even spare a thought to imagine how the rest of the plan might be proceeding—Niddler swooping out of the sky to carry Ren to safety, Ioz stealing the jewel back from Bloth.

Instead, for as long as she could stand it, she was merely the conduit of power, and of will. And what she willed— _do not move!_ —came to pass.

Eternity passed, or an instant. Her control over the power began to falter as her entire being cried out for release. This was too much for one ecomancer, too much for one mortal woman…

Overriding the consciousness of relatively mindless creatures like plants or dagrons was difficult enough. Doing the same with _humans_ threatened to tear her apart, mind and body.

“Tula!” Ioz’s voice cut through her concentration, threatening to rip her out of the trance. “Time to go!”

“Ren,” she protested, wincing. Speaking felt as if someone had jammed a knife into her skull. “The gem!”

“No time for the gem,” Ioz told her. “Better to live to fight another day.”

Her world upended and, screaming, she lost herself to darkness.

In different circumstances, Ioz would have given anything for a string of luck this good. In the two days since the reclaiming Ren from the Maelstrom, everything had gone his way, down to the wind that had eased their escape and the fog that had shrouded the Wraith for much of the journey. It had faded now in the sunlight, but it had given them much-needed cover Even with Tula’s ecomantic powers, he couldn’t have asked for better. And none of it mattered.

None of it, unless Ren and Tula woke up.

Exhaustion muddled his senses as he abandoned the wheel to tromp down into the crew’s quarters to check on his companions. Niddler would—hopefully—see what needed to be done and at least manage not to smash the ship onto anything while he wasn’t looking. In the meantime…

The situation belowdecks remained unchanged. Ren slept uneasily on his bunk, twitching and making tortured sounds as if he dreamed himself back in Bloth’s hands; Tula stared straight at the ceiling that that glassy, unseeing look in her eyes. Even if he hadn’t needed to constantly tend to their escape, Ioz wouldn’t have been able to rest with them like that.

In truth, Tula worried him a great deal more than Ren. The young prince was at least mostly in one piece, despite whatever Bloth had done to him. He was strong, too. Given time and plenty of rest, Ioz was pretty sure Ren would recover.

But Tula… he couldn’t be sure she hadn’t fried her brains out with that foolish ploy of hers. It had gotten Ren free, just like she promised, but if it meant that Tula was gone and only the shell remained… Ioz didn’t think it had been worth the price. Time would tell if she could recover from whatever ecomantic ailment she had inflicted upon herself.

So Ioz turned his attention to Ren for now. Without someone else to help crew the Wraith, Ioz was going to reach his limit soon. And, intimately familiar was he was with the many dangers that lurked within the waters of Mer, he didn’t like the idea of letting the ship drift crewless even for a little while.

He gently took Ren by the shoulder, careful to avoid the healing puncture-wounds where Bloth’s slugs had been attached, and shook the young prince awake.

Ren gave a shout and flailed upright as he came awake, nearly smacking Ioz in the face before he realized he was safely back aboard the Wraith.

“Time to wake up, son of Primus,” Ioz told him.

“Ioz,” Ren gasped. He looked about him almost frantically, the way a man might who’d been freed after spending years as a prisoner. He sucked in a horrified breath as his gaze fell on the occupant of the other cot. “Tula!”

“Aye, my friend,” Ioz agreed. “She’s been like that since she pulled that jitaten stunt to get you off the Maelstrom. Don’t know when, or if, she’ll snap out of it.”

Ren took all this in silently, his eyes darting nervously back and forth. “The Treasure!” he gasped suddenly.

Bloth must have really done a number on the boy, for it to take him this long to remember his all-consuming quest.

Ioz shook his head. “There was no time.”

Ren’s face twisted with rage; in all their time together, Ioz had never seen him look so angry. “All that,” he all but spat, “for nothing.”

Unused to finding himself in the role of calming voice of reason, Ioz pointed out, “Chongo-longo, Ren! We’re alive. We’re still sailing. We’ll get the Treasure back from that kreld eater one day.”

With uncharacteristic pessimism, Ren asked, “What if we don’t, Ioz?”

His gaze was locked on Tula as he said it. Ioz watched both of his young companions in silence for a moment. “You managed to get your hands on the first twelve Treasures…” he said at last. It seemed inevitable that Ren’s determination would overcome whatever else might stand in its way, much as it had for each Treasure along the way.

Ren let his head fall, brow furrowing. At last he murmured, “There’s a part of me that thinks you never should have woken me.”

“That may be, my friend, but I can’t keep this jitaten ship on course much longer by myself,” Ioz explained. “We’ve made it this far, but Bloth has a habit of finding our trail. Even if we did make port, I don’t think we could hide for long.” Even as he said it, it seemed painfully clear that he had no idea what to do. If it had been anyone else, even Zoolie, he wouldn’t have revealed something so close to an admission of weakness or uncertainty. But Ren would understand. At least, the old Ren would have understood. This one… he wasn’t sure.

He supposed if Ren wouldn’t—or couldn’t—help, they had bigger problems than the potential of accidentally running into a reef. “Can you stand?”

For the moment, at least, Ren swallowed his rage. “I can try,” he said, sounding almost like himself.

The young prince heaved himself to his feet before Ioz could even think to offer a hand. He wobbled, but kept his feet. “I can stand,” he declared.

“Good. Now let’s see if you’re up to sailing.” Ioz didn’t wait for Ren to show signs of weakness. He headed straight for the hatch, up and out into the sun once more. “Monkeybird!” he called. “Think you and Ren can take things from here? I need a little shut-eye…”

Niddler squawked his elation the moment Ren climbed into view from belowdecks; shedding feathers in his excitement, he launched himself over the wheel to throw his arms around Ren, exclaiming, “You’re alive! I thought I’d never see you again!”

Hurting as he was, Ren couldn’t help but feel a little better. He stood now under sunny skies, with the open sea all around, surrounded by most of his small group of friends and without an enemy to be seen. The Maelstrom was behind him now, in the past, though if he thought about it too long it threatened to leap into the present. Any moment now, he would open his eyes and find himself back there—

He let his arms go around Niddler, squeezing briefly, and then it was back to business.

Ioz was surprisingly patient as he put Ren through his paces, and as Niddler insisted on tagging along every step of the way. After days spent evading any sign of Bloth’s scout ships or, worse, the Maelstrom itself, Ioz must be completely exhausted. Not to mention he couldn’t have known whether either of his human companions would survive their ordeal. The old Ioz, the one he’d first met all those month’s ago, would have found a port and jumped ship at the first opportunity. Or just thrown Ren and Tula overboard.

Ren should have been touched, but all he could feel was numb.

Still, the days of rest had clearly begun their work. His body was already healing. He was still tired and his wounds still ached, but he had no problem keeping the Wraith on course. He would probably need help if the weather turned or if they ran into dark water or some other danger… but for now he could manage.

“Now, keep her on course,” Ioz instructed, “and don’t get into any more trouble!”

“On course,” Ren murmured. “But what is our course?”

“We make for Andorus,” was all Ioz said before he disappeared belowdecks.

Their bearings were odd, if Andorus truly was their destination… but Ren supposed it only made sense to take a roundabout route. Bloth was surely on their trail, even if there was currently no sign of him; no doubt he was furious that they had escaped him again. If they weren’t careful, they would give their plans away, and the Maelstrom would be waiting for them at Andorus.

The thought of facing the Maelstrom again sent a shiver down his spine and a shock of terror all the way to his bones. That Bloth not only could reduce him to a mass of pain and anguish, but _had_ done so and most likely would do so again… And yet, deep down, he knew he would have to face that monstrous ship and its equally horrible captain again. After all, he no longer needed his Compass to tell him that was where he would find the last Treasure of Rule.

If only he hadn’t been so foolish as to fall into Bloth’s clutches… this entire mess was all his fault.

“Ren? Are you all right?” Niddler’s voice cut through the haze.

Startled, he realized he was gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles had gone white. “I’m fine, Niddler,” he lied, and resolved not to think about Bloth or the Maelstrom…or just how fragile his resolve might be. Dwelling on the past wouldn’t help Tula. But getting her to Andorus might. If nothing else could help her recover, perhaps the Viva Tree’s power could.

Going topside after snatching what rest he could—by Daven’s beard, it was hard to sleep with Tula lying there like that—Ioz braced himself for the worst. No telling what trouble Ren and the monkeybird might have gotten into while he was asleep, after all.

But for once, it was no trouble. They even appeared to be reasonably on course.

“I’ll take the wheel now,” he announced.

Looking weary, but not much the worse from taking his shift at the helm, Ren yielded without question. Niddler gave him suspicious looks from multiple angles, snaking his neck around the way he so often did, but none of that was unexpected. Ioz and Niddler had an uneasy truce, at best, and recent events had done little to improve things.

But for Ren’s sake, they would tolerate each other, as they had done since the beginning of the quest.

Ioz expected that Ren would head belowdecks at the first chance he got, but the boy surprised him by lingering on deck. “Do you really think going to Andorus will help Tula?” he asked.

As much as he didn’t want to admit it, heading for Andorus was more like a drowning man’s last gasp than a map to hidden treasure. He hadn’t the slightest idea if it would help or just be a waste of time, not that he particularly felt like admitting that. He had rather hoped the boy wouldn’t ask questions. Still, he owed Ren some sort of answer. “It was the best I could come up with in the moment.”

Ren leaned against his back against the rail, bracing himself with elbows and forearms hooked over the top. “Perhaps you can tell me this much, then,” he went on. “What happened on the Maelstrom? How did you free me?”

“That was the wench’s idea, and her doing,” Ioz told him, making no particular effort to disguise the irritation this fact now caused him. “She wanted to find a way to save you without paying Bloth’s ransom.” He hadn’t begrudged her then; all twelve of the other Treasures of Rule was a high price to pay, even for a prince of Octopon, and there was no telling what destruction Bloth would wreak if he got his hands on the full set of Treasures.

“And it all but killed her,” Ren concluded wearily.

“Perhaps,” Ioz agreed. “Jitaten witch! She said she knew what she was doing—if she borrowed power from the Viva Tree, she could use her ecomantic witchery to keep Bloth and his men occupied long enough for us to haul you _and_ the gem back to the Wraith and make our escape. Like taking candy clams from a baby, she said.”

Ren watched him with one of those inscrutable looks of his. “But she never mentioned what it might do to her, did she?”

Ioz fell silent, scowling at the endless waves ahead. Tula could be quite persuasive when she wanted to be, and was often unstoppable once she put her mind to something. Of course she hadn’t spoken of any risks. What sort of selfish son of a sea dog did Ren take him for?

He wouldn’t have willingly offered up Tula’s life like this. But then again, he hadn’t asked about any risks, either. He’d simply seized the chance she offered.

Maybe he was a selfish son of a sea dog.

Someone must have rubbed cindersand in Tula’s eyes while she was sleeping. There was no other reason for them to hurt so much. Her first attempt at blinking was awful. As that pain gradually faded, she realized it must have been from keeping her eyes open too long, and not from any real damage. Or any cindersand. She became aware, too, that everything else hurt. Especially her head.

She groaned.

Ren, blurry but unmistakable, leaned over her and into her field of vision. “Tula!”

“Ay jitata,” she complained, dropping her own voice nearly to a whisper as more pain radiated through her skull. “Must you be so loud?”

“Sorry,” he said, entirely contrite and much quieter.

He drew back, beyond where she could see, but she could feel the mattress shift as he sat beside her. She wanted to look at his face—the face she had risked everything for—but right now blinking was about as much movement as she could handle. Eventually, she managed to ask, “Where are we? What happened?”

“If the wind stays in our favor, we’ll reach Andorus in the morning,” he told her.

Andorus. Her home island, summoner of mixed feelings and ecomantic power.

She groaned again. She might have survived her own foolhardy plan, but now she would have to survive Teron’s wrath. If he knew what she had done—and there was no way he had not at least guessed—he would be furious. Unfortunately he was also the best person to help her understand both what she had done and the toll it had extracted from her.

“Tula!”

Again with the shouting.

“Not so loud,” she protested, squeezing her eyes shut as if that would shut out the sound, or the throbbing in her head.

He gave her a moment of silence before asking, “What do you need?”

“Help me up?”

Ever the good friend, he did as she asked, helping hoist her up until she was sitting beside him. She leaned into him, as much for the support as because she was suddenly glad beyond words that they were both alive after everything.

After a while, he leaned into her, too.

They stayed there like that for a long time, holding each other up.

Tula’s thoughts drifted back to the last thing she remembered before her long sleep, to the terrifying certainty that her mind would crack under the strain of the ecomantic demands she had placed upon it. And for what?

A boy? A dream?

More than that: she’d done it for _hope_. For hope that, despite how awful and cruel she knew things could become, that it didn’t have to end that way.

The effort had nearly been the end of her. _Ren_ had nearly been the end of her, but she already knew she would do it again in an instant. She wondered if Ren felt the same way, if he would give anything and everything it took to make his dream a reality… and found that she knew, too, that he would.

They were battered and beaten, and the inner wounds they bore delved darker and deeper depths than ever before. But hope was still there. If they still had each other, and Ioz, and Niddler, and the Wraith… nothing short of death could stop them.

Much like their encounter with the Darkdweller, after this they could never be the same again. But they would carry on.

Ren was still sitting beside Tula when Ioz came tromping down the ladder. Ioz’s expression shifted rapidly through a complex series of emotions before settling on “annoyed.”

“You,” he said pointedly to Ren, “are supposed to be sleeping.”

He turned to Tula. “And you!” Surprising perhaps all three of them, he hauled her to her feet and into a fierce hug. “By Kunda, woman, it’s good to see you awake!”

Tula laughed weakly, dropping back to sit beside Ren as soon as Ioz released her. “It’s nice to see you, too, Ioz.”

“I thought you were dead, after that stunt you pulled!”

“So did I,” she admitted. “But it worked!”

Ren opened his mouth to demand that they both promise never to do something so foolish again, but he realized the hopelessness of such a demand just in time, and kept his silence before he could say something stupid. He would do anything to keep them safe. How could he ask that they do less for him? Neither of them would allow such a thing, even if he did have the guts to ask it of them.

Their willingness to put themselves at risk terrified him. Only a few months ago they had been strangers. Now he couldn’t imagine life without them.

He’d never known his father, or his mother. Was this what family felt like?

“I told you his brains are still scrambled from whatever that naja dog Bloth did to him,” Ioz was saying.

“Ren, are you all right?” Tula asked, much more gently than Ioz.

“I’m fine. Just… thinking.”

“Thinking?” Ioz asked. “More like hatching a plan, I hope.”

“Thinking,” Ren echoed, “that you two are the closest thing to a family I’ve ever had.”

“Give me a good crew instead of a family, any day,” Ioz retorted, his tone betraying amusement as much as a pirate’s disdain for such a maudlin idea. No matter how true that idea might be. “After all, you’ve met my sister.”

Even Ren couldn’t argue with that. In fact, entirely unexpectedly, he found himself laughing along with Tula and Ioz.

The pain and fear from his time as Bloth’s prisoner were still there, and would likely be with him for a long time to come, but it was beginning to seem like he might yet be all right, after all. “Wait a minute, Ioz. If you’re down here, then that means…”

“Aye, the monkeybird’s at the helm.”

“…Were you _checking on us,_ Ioz?”

Ioz muttered several curses under his breath, apparently searching for just the right words to express his disdain for such an idea.

“So you _do_ have a heart,” Tula observed tartly, prodding even more curses from Ioz.

“Bah! I’m going topside,” Ioz grumbled at last. He headed back toward the ladder, waving a hand in their general direction. “You two come up with a plan. We’re going to need one!”

Ren watched him go with a fond smile on his face and calm in his heart for the first time in too many days. Hearing his two friends teasing each other had done more to heal Ren’s hurts than days of rest and recovery had managed.

A part of him still feared—deeply—the prospect of facing Bloth once again. Another part of him yearned for it, and for the chance for revenge. And that part of him frightened him, too. Yet he couldn’t deny the necessity of the coming confrontation. They needed to retrieve the compass and the final Treasure, or else Bloth would win and the dark water would consume all of Mer.

And yet somehow he knew, with his loyal crew at his side, they’d find a way.


End file.
